Review by Brandon Wolfe
Look who's made a return it's out guest movie review Brandon. He is a simple man. Uncomplicated-simple, not dumb-simple, of course. Let's see how his review compared to Matt's review of the film.
Mounting a sequel to 2007’s dismal and dull Ghost Rider seemed like one of the less arduous tasks in recent Hollywood history. If the bar had been set any lower, it would have been buried nine feet deep in the earth. Really, all any sequel would have had to accomplish to claim a minor victory would be to not be astoundingly terrible, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance pulls off this most meager of feats. Directed by Neveldine/Taylor, the junk-auteur duo responsible for the Crank films, Vengeance is a trashier, more low-rent affair. It strikes a less polished, more grindhouse-esque aesthetic than the original, which arguably better befits the schlocky material. However, it is still not what you’d call good.
Taking place some indeterminate amount of years after the events of the original film, Spirit of Vengeance positions itself as more of a reboot than a sequel. In fact, the return of Nicolas Cage as the title character’s alter ego, Johnny Blaze, is the only thing that tethers this film to its predecessor at all. Eva Mendes is gone without even a mention, the Devil is now played by Ciarán Hinds (evoking Albert Finney) instead of Peter Fonda, and the flashbacks to the fateful deal a young Johnny Blaze made with Ol’ Scratch are noticeably different from what we saw in the original film.
The film concerns a young mother attempting to protect her son from an army of marauders dispatched by Roarke, the name taken by the Devil in his earthly form. Roarke pulled a Rosemary’s Baby on the mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), years ago to create a son that he could use as a vessel for his demonic powers, unbound by the weaknesses inherent to inhabiting a fully human body. Now that the son, Danny (Fergus Riordan), is old enough for Roarke to utilize, he is being relentlessly pursued by Roarke’s chief henchman, Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth, calling to mind a less charismatic version of Stephen Dorff in Blade). A mystery man named Moreau (Idris Elba) has taken the role of Danny’s protector, but, realizing he might be outmatched in this fight, he turns to Cage’s Johnny Blaze, hoping that his alter ego, the Rider, can shore up the difference in the good guys’ favor. Moreau promises Blaze that if he can save Danny, the sect of monks that Moreau works for will lift the curse of the Rider and Blaze will finally be free.
This, of course, ignores the fact that Blaze opted to keep the curse at the end of the previous film when the offer to relieve him of it was presented, so making his primary motivation in this film to cast it away is a bit confusing. But again, this film doesn’t seem to regard itself as a direct sequel, so that bit of discontinuity is not unexpected. The film also casts the Rider himself in a different light. In the first film, he was portrayed as a more heroic figure, protecting innocents from evil. In this film, he’s a darker figure, one who punishes sinners equally and places no weight on one sin over another. Whether you’re a murderer or just a petty thief is irrelevant to him. If you’ve done anything wrong in your life, your soul is worthy of incineration. This is an interesting new wrinkle to the character, but the film doesn’t really explore it, as it defiantly seems to want to keep as little on its mind as possible.
One thing in the film’s favor is that it allows Cage to cut loose a bit. He was restrained in action-movie autopilot in the original, but gets to go wild here with some occasional bursts of trademark Cage nuttiness. One scene, in which he threatens a thug with the release of the Rider, is almost like a cut-scene from Bad Lieutenant, and it’s absurdly entertaining (and entertainingly absurd). Still, these are only brief flashes of awesome Cageiness, and most of the movie finds the actor functioning at a much dourer and joyless level
Neveldine/Taylor didn’t make Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance as frenetic and insane as they did the Crank twosome, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also lacks the impish personality of those films. Its approach is more prosaic and straightforward. The directors’ penchant for juvenile humor does manifest itself in a running gag where we see the Rider urinating in full flamethrower fashion, and I was amused by a throwaway bit about how Twinkies are immune to forces of demonic decay. The film does retain the somewhat garish look of the Crank films. The directors seem to pride themselves on a down-and-dirty visual approach that renders their films as energetic eyesores. A chief example is the appearance of the Rider, whose flaming skull is less pristinely white, and more smoky and charred, than before. This interpretation is more striking, but also willfully ugly.
The problem with Spirit of Vengeance, above all else, is that it’s 90 minutes of clichéd, predictable detritus. There are stray nuggets of entertainment value to be found, and the chase and fight sequences have a scrappy energy, but there’s really not a lot here we haven’t seen before (in fact, we saw almost this exact same movie last year under the title Drive Angry). I don’t know that Neveldine/Taylor, with their “Beavis and Butt-Head go to film school” sensibilities, are capable of making an actual good movie, but it seems like they should have been capable of a more lively and spirited film than this one.
But still, definitely better than Ghost Rider.
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